The inventive concept relates to semiconductor memory devices, and more particularly, to nonvolatile memory-based memory systems capable of performing a migration operation.
Semiconductor memory devices may be classified as volatile memory devices, such as the DRAM, SRAM, etc., and nonvolatile memory devices, such as the EEPROM, FRAM, PRAM, MRAM, flash memory, etc. Volatile memory devices loses stored data in the absence of applied power, while nonvolatile memory devices retain stored data even in the absence of applied power. Within the broader class of nonvolatile memory devices, flash memory provides certain merits such as a rapid read speed, low power consumption, a mass storage capacity, etc. Thus, memory systems including flash memory have been widely used as a data storage medium in contemporary digital computational platforms and consumer electronics.
Memory systems including flash memory may use a log block or a cache block to manage file data efficiently and improve memory system performance. That is, memory systems may reduce the number of required merge operations and/or block erase operations by storing file data in a cache region before the file data is stored in a main region.
However, as the size of file data increases the demands placed on the cache region increase. In many instances, available space in the cache region becomes a serious memory system resource constraint, and in such circumstances, file data must be frequently exchanged between the cache region and main region, thus lowering the overall performance of the memory system.